


Something Left

by raineraine



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Broken Memories, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Is Trying, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers Feels, Bucky Doesn't Know Himself, Canon Divergence - Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Canon Influenced, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Smut, Gratuitous Smut, M/M, NSFW, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Not Suitable for Work, POV Alternating, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Steve Rogers, Rebuilding, References to Hydra, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Tension, Slow Build, Steve Rogers Feels, Stucky - Freeform, What-If, coming home, not safe for work, steve loves bucky, three-shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-12-25 03:31:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12027192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raineraine/pseuds/raineraine
Summary: An alternate take on the Civil War timeline, and how Bucky and Steve come back together.





	1. Bucky

**Author's Note:**

> The song lyrics here are from "Something Left" by Arbors Lane. The original version of the song and the acoustic are phenomenal, give it a listen. 
> 
> Thank you to h34rt1lly as always for being my beta and making this better. 
> 
> The rating may change to E, we'll see.

Jolting upright, he clenched the pistol he kept at the side of the bed, chest heaving as he looked for the man who had been threatening Steve Rogers. As his gaze focused, he realized that no one was there at all-- it was just another dream about the man he’d read about in a museum. Steve Rogers plagued his dreams, someone who had only existed in what might have been a past life, trapped behind the glass of his subconscious. That life was before Hydra.

 

He didn’t feel much like James Buchanan Barnes. He didn’t feel much like The Winter Soldier, either. He’d been testing out another identity-- one that Steve Rogers had insisted belonged to him, on that bridge.

 

“My name is Bucky,” he said to the empty spaces in his studio. It still felt like it belonged to someone else, but that was nothing new. The only thing that felt like his was a metal arm, something that even a broken mind could recognize as a humorous parallel, considering Hydra had saddled him with it.

 

Flexing his fingers, metal and flesh, it made the divide in his mind tangible to the eye.

 

Two halves of a person.

 

It was too bad they were competing over nothing more than a breathing corpse.

 

The time didn’t matter much, not when he woke up like this. The thin blanket he’d hung over the window to block out the view didn’t show signs of sunlight in the threadbare spots, but it didn’t incline him to stay in bed. Rolling from the mattress onto the floor, he braced an arm against the rough wood and shoved up, taking the few steps toward the counter. Coffee.

 

Something about it felt familiar, stirring powder into hot water, but he couldn’t place it. _Probably still worth writing down,_ Bucky decided before he set the cup on the counter and tugged a notebook free from his backpack. Several others tried to spill out, crammed too tightly, but he just shoved them away once more. One at a time.

 

Hoisting himself onto the counter, taking care not to spill his coffee, Bucky fished a pen from his pocket. Somewhere along the line, it had become easier to just sleep in his clothes, ready to leave with nothing but his backpack to carry.

 

 _Dreamt of Steve Rogers again,_ he scraped across the top of a clean page, _and woke up feeling like I should remember why making coffee feels peaceful._ It wasn’t much, but it was something-- another page in a long line of those before it.

 

* * *

 

_These days there's proof I'm haunted_

_Sleep walking, hopeless talking_

_I like to hope there's something left_

 

* * *

 

Four months in one place. It was supposed to feel like a home, if he was to take the words of the people in the streets as absolute. In the markets, Bucky heard them, buying homes or moving into apartments. He didn’t live in a lavish area, but the people here were still hopeful. They wanted to build a ‘home,’ to envelope themselves inside of walls that were supposed to offer stability and calm. The longer he stayed, the more it felt like a cage.

 

It was foolish and he knew it, staying in one place when he knew people were looking for him. Hydra. Steve. Natasha. Bucky should have picked up after weeks, not months. Even for someone who was always ready to leave, it was easier to stay, knowing a routine. Maybe that was just another score in the column against him, the reason he kept going back to Hydra even when he had the ability to disappear. Routine. But this wasn’t Hydra, and focusing on putting together the pieces of his mind seemed crucial.

 

What if he was the person Steve Rogers remembered?

 

Sometimes, Bucky could believe it.

 

Tonight, he’d woken up with his hands clutching an exposed pipe in the wall, with nothing but a diminutive amount of pressure between his grip and the old iron fracturing.

 

 _Maybe it’s time._ The thought was constricting in a way that Bucky didn’t know how to read. It felt like an ache, deep in his bones. Looking at the chipping plaster, the exposed brick-- he could see something, from another time. Beds, inches from the ground, held up by mere shipping pallets. There were two, shoved together, inside this memory. He didn’t breathe, afraid it would dissipate with a sign of life, but kept watching through the eyes of someone else. Blonde hairs stuck to the pillow, no casing to keep it clean, and a pile of blankets knotted at the foot of the bed.

 

_Why is it so sad?_

 

It was impossible, he knew, but Bucky swore he could smell the acid of vomit lingering in the air.

 

It wouldn’t do, hovering between now and...whatever this was. Shaking his head, Bucky reached for his notebook, sketching the scene before it left with the same rush that it had appeared. He couldn’t suppress the frown, realizing that his pens were only black ink, yet the blonde hair and knot of blankets had been so vibrant in his mind. He’d never sought colors before.

 

Money wasn’t the problem. If Hydra had gifted him a single thing, it was all of the locations of the safe houses they had ever had in the last seventy years. Before they had time to destroy them, after the river, it been easy to systematically clear all of the cash from them. He’d paid six months rent here in cash, just in case, and to avoid any questions. Sparing the few dollars for something of color just seemed frivolous. Maybe it wasn’t. Blinking, Bucky realized that how long he had spent staring at the sketch, with daylight streaming over the page in patches where he had been wishing color would bloom.

 

* * *

 

_Eyes open, heart still pumping_

_Chest heaving, sick but running_

_I like to hope there's something left._

 

* * *

 

Romania no longer felt like a place to seek solace in. Instead, it had become just another grey space. Maybe that’s how it would always be, until he found whatever it was that made him someone-- even if someone was James Buchanan Barnes. For two weeks, Bucky had stayed up longer, fighting an ingrained sense of proficient scheduling in favor of wrapping his fingers around colored pencils. The pencils cost more than he spent on food in a week, and another tug of familiarity stirred in his mind as he had weighed whether or not to spend the money. In the end, Bucky had bought the set: fifty watercolor pencils, a compliment to the ink of his pens.

 

The sketches flowed easily, immediately after the dreams that seemed to only get sharper in the details. After they faded, with rough lines to commemorate them, Bucky wrote the same bits and pieces he had been recording for months. But at night, when he burned candles instead of turning on the shitty, single overhead bulb, he could pretend that the memory of sketching Steve Rogers’s sleeping figure was more than just an elaborate dream. He’d lay the layers of color with care, a cup of water at his feet and the pencils propped against the counter as he took to the floor.

 

Blonde hair and blue eyes, the same that haunted him from the man on the bridge, the man he’d pulled from the river.

 

Steven Grant Rogers.

 

A museum couldn’t tell him what his dreams did.

 

The more Bucky created, the clearer it became that he couldn’t stay. If there really were pieces of himself, these dreams that came in burning waves, they certainly weren’t buried under the floorboards of an ill-kept building. New York. Steve Rogers was probably there now, from the day Bucky had left him on the shore of the Potomac River in DC.

 

It seemed strange, having spent so long running from the possibility of a ghost, to consider running right back. He knew Hydra had exercised every piece of what made their Winter Soldiers human: sympathy, empathy, and memories. It was hard when nothing but headaches onset as he remembered the pain of being shocked-- even now, he ground his teeth at the thought. What he could remember, the thing they never took, was the torture of the other soldiers in training. Their screams sounded so much like the ones of the girls whose bones he’d had to break in the Red Room. Pain was a weakness that had to be destroyed…

 

… Yet here he was, stewing in the pain that came from broken pieces of a whole picture. There was a benefit, Bucky reminded himself once again, of living out of a backpack. Tucking the pencils into a narrow free space, he surveyed the apartment for anything crucial that he may have missed. There was nothing-- another expectation of a soldier. Leave no trace. It wouldn’t be easy to get to another country, but he’d managed before, and would once again. There were always ships.

 

* * *

 

_In the shadows, no one can know_

_If hope's a ship, sail when the beacon's off today_

_Come the future, or even sooner_

 

* * *

 

Two weeks of crouching between crates and eluding the sailors to steal food and water from a cargo ship, bound for New York out of a Russian port. The smell of the docks as he slipped from the ship reminded Bucky of something he had read in the museum-- that he had been a dockworker before enlisting in the Army. Stalling at the sidewalk, he tried to picture it. Some version, any version, of himself. Did he haul the crates by hand? It wasn’t traceable, not like this, with no bodies around to paint a bigger picture.

 

Pulling his hood lower, he started into the street, hands in his pockets to conceal any flashes of metal. If there was anything he knew about New York City, it was unlikely that anyone would even take note of him. Even as the Winter Soldier, people had been painfully oblivious to what went on around them. Bucky had no destination-- he’d done enough sleeping on the ship. Daylight was still hours off, which damned the possibility of finding a place to hide out until standard office hours began.

 

Letting himself amble through the quiet of twilight wasn’t something his conditioning would have allowed.

 

Maybe this was an action of James Buchanan Barnes.

 

The thought of it was like stepping into a warm patch of sun after the chill of rain, warming his very bones.

 

 _Is it possible to build someone new out of the bits of someone you were?_ Bucky pondered the thought, roaming the streets until he found himself at the one landmark anyone with a skiff of a mental map could recognize: the Brooklyn Bridge. Fitting, if not humorous, that the sunrise was spilling over the waters of the East River in the same patterns his water colors had over the blankets he had drawn at the foot of a bed.

 

“Steve’s bed,” he whispered, the words lost in the din of passing traffic. “Our bed,” Bucky tested, louder this time.

 

It was easier to tell, now, when the memories burst back once again. Although it shouldn’t, they always seemed sharper than any details in his day-to-day life had been. This time, it was a man, leaning over the rail of the bridge and laughing as the wind whipped his tie into his face. The blonde hair was a dead giveaway, even if the man in the memory was smaller than the man who had stood on another bridge not so very long ago.

 

It didn’t feel right to sit and sketch in Lower Manhattan, not with the place that saturated his broken memories just across the river. So Bucky ran. It felt strange, to be running toward a place that screamed Steve Rogers, when Bucky had spent nearly two years running from him. The exertion made his stomach groan with hunger, but he couldn’t stop-- not now, when he had a mission. There was always a mission.

 

* * *

 

_I can't forget, I can't forget_

_All I know is there's something left._


	2. Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve can't accept life without Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! I'm trying to wrap this up at a decent pace, since it is only a three-shot. Thank you so much to everyone who has read, left kudos, given comments, or subscribed! <3 
> 
> Thank you as always to h34rt1lly for making my work better by being my loving beta.

Months without a sign. Months since he’d had barrelled into Bucky’s last known location, an apartment in Romania, and found nothing but empty walls. Sam had assured him that they would keep looking, but averted his eyes, not wanting to make another promise that they couldn’t follow through with. Bucky just kept running from him, a ghost that slipped through his fingers if he got too close. Even now, staring at pins on a map that marked locations of interest, there was no pattern to chase after.

 

 _Steven Grant Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes-- best friends since childhood._ Steve had heard it too many times, could tell the story better than a recording in this museum, and yet he kept coming back. Here, hand pressed against the glass, wondering if he had enough pull with the government to break through it and steal every picture of Bucky that they kept trapped there. All he’d need was the star-spangled smile.

 

The temptation waned, at least for today, as he heard footfalls. This was a public space-- Steve couldn’t be angry at the museum goers for cutting his wallowing short. But he fled all the same, legs hugging his bike as he angled around traffic, seeking the highway that would spit him back in New York. Tony would call him reckless, running back to D.C. again just to rot in a sea of memories, trapped behind glass.

 

It didn’t matter where he went,  that glass was still separating his reality.

 

The pieces he wanted were still trapped behind a wall.

 

A chance at making this life bearable had still left him on the bank of a river.

 

Steve didn’t turn on the lights. It would just make it worse, to paint the reality that Bucky wasn’t waiting for him. It was the dream that followed him, implanting Bucky into this apartment, into this life. Domesticity had never seemed dull, not in their Brooklyn apartment before Bucky had been drafted. It was always supposed to be Steve leaving. Funny how things never worked how they were supposed to.

 

He compromised with a lamp, curling into his arm chair and propping a sketchbook on his knee. There were always the what ifs, of course-- today, it was, _What if he’d been waiting here for me?_ Steve sketched, the lamplight illuminating the harsh reality every time he glanced up at the couch and pictured someone that should have been there.

 

* * *

 

_There’s something left_

 

* * *

 

 _You did your best._ Peggy’s words still had the power to haunt him, long after they had been spoken, wrapped around his every thought even from her grave. The best he could, even though he was too late to save Bucky from being captured the first time. The best he could, when he let Bucky fall off of that train and straight into Hydra’s waiting grasp. Would she have even given him the pass, if he had told her about what happened on the bridge, or in the river? Told him it was the best he could have done, if she knew Steve had never told tell Bucky the truth about how he felt?

 

“I need you, idiot,” Steve called into the open air. The cold nights were settling in, but he still ended up out here, ignoring the chill that bit at his bones. “Where are you, Buck?”

 

Steve had never pictured the end of the line feeling so short. Didn’t really imagine the end would mean he’d go on living his life, either. It was supposed to mean until the last breath, side by side, the way Bucky’s voice had wavered on the last syllable being just enough to give it away. Bucky wouldn’t leave him to go on alone.

 

He was out there.

 

‘There’ was a place that was only an idea.

 

But wherever ‘there’ was, Steve wanted to find it.

 

Sam and Nat would never be on board to follow him right now-- not after the last dead end in Romania. Steve would have to find Bucky alone this time. Maybe that was the way it always should have been. Without any intel, it would be veering right past “difficult” and straight into the territory of “impossible,” by anyone else’s count. For him, it feel more under the umbrella of “necessary” than it did “impossible.”

 

The skyline had changed too much for Steve to trace the general outline of Brooklyn. What he could see from here was the Brooklyn Bridge, and that was all he needed to remind him why he had to find Bucky. _That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb to run away from a fight? I’m following him._ Steve couldn’t stop the quirk of his lip at the irony of that statement, even now. At least Buck wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Steve was still too dumb to run away from a fight.

 

* * *

  
_Though not all is as sure_

 _The sun rises everyday_  


* * *

 

It had been easy to slip into the streets of Manhattan in the early hours. Four-thirty was a safety-net, before anyone could confront him about where he was going. The later in the day he wandered, the more people on the streets would stop to consider his size before realization dawned on them. Steve had pulled on layers in the dark, wondering how it might have felt for Bucky before he set off on foot. Taking a page out of the team’s book, he’d pulled on a knit cap and a pair of oversized sunglasses, hoping they were enough to detract from who he was.

 

Around the time he was approaching the bridge, Steve couldn’t shove down the nagging voice that his bike would have been faster. Efficient, at least. But he wasn’t looking for efficiency-- he was trying to get into the head of a man on the run. Bucky wouldn’t have been casually zipping around New York City on motorcycle. _Or wherever it is he’s hiding out,_ Steve corrected himself as he stepped off the bridge onto the sidewalks that beelined for Brooklyn.

 

It was some form of psychological torture, walking through streets that he had known better than anything else, only to see nothing familiar. The buildings that seemed like they had looked the same as they always had-- until you got close enough to see signs of wear. Sleek cars that Steve couldn’t remember the names of lined once-sleepy streets, making everything seem smaller. Corner bodegas had been replaced by restaurants that only opened a handful of days a week.

 

Today he wasn’t Captain America.

 

He was just Steve fuckin’ Rogers, wandering Brooklyn looking for a fight.

 

This time, the fight was in his own mind, as the memories that stained every brick swallowed him whole.

 

A flush crept to Steve’s neck, overwhelmed with the crashing influx of information that he tried so often to avoid. Maybe Sam was right about the twenty-first century being utter sensory overload. It would have been sensible to turn around and go-- but he had to know how it was for Bucky. How would a man who had forgotten everything, painfully ripped from his mind, cope with so much information being shoved at him at once?

 

The buildings were aglow around their rooftops, the sunrise trapped in the same way Steve was now, eyes trained on the building that had once housed their apartment. How much would Bucky ever remember? Steve couldn’t be sure. But what he could be sure of was a pair of eyes staring back at him from the rooftop, looking achingly familiar.  


* * *

  
_Blessed be this heavy hole in my chest_

_I'm passing off this pain_

_As breathing like I'm alive, when I'm dead_  


* * *

 

Steve felt like he was sixteen again, the way his lungs tightened when he raised his hand in acknowledgement, not feeling in control of his movement. The eyes on the roof didn’t blink. It was then that Steve realized he had been holding his breath, forcing himself to inhale and wincing at the burn of cold air. If he approached too quickly, it could ruin everything. Bucky could disappear again.

  
_If it’s Bucky at all._ It could be anyone, right? He could be walking right into a trap, to chase after this man, a figment of his memories. But why here? Why now? How could anyone know he would be here, alone, in order to play a game of cat and mouse? Steve was coming up blank on all accounts, tucking a hand in his pocket and tipping his head back to survey the alleyway that snaked beside the building. The fire escape ladder wasn’t even pulled down, which meant whoever it was had to have found another way to the roof. That narrowed the field.

 

He had to make a decision, before the eyes on the roof disappeared. Steve couldn’t let another chance slip away. “I’ve spent two years letting you run from me,” Steve whispered, his words lost in the wind.

  
It didn’t feel right to leave.

 

Maybe it was a mistake, or a risk.

 

Bucky had risked everything for Steve, once upon a time.

 

Each step closer the building put his view of the roof further out of sight, but the burn of a gaze still warmed Steve as he jumped to pull himself up the ladder. Better this way, to hoist himself higher, than to risk leaving it down for anyone else to join them. Maybe each rung was closer to death. Maybe it was closer to a memory. More than that, Steve hoped it was closer to Bucky.

 

Rolling over the ledge to land on the rooftop, Steve let out a heavy breath, afraid to let his eyes leave the cement. He didn’t know which option was for better, and which was for worse-- finding Bucky or not.

 

“I’m with you,” Steve called as he straightened up to stand, forcing his eyes to comb the roof for his target.

 

He hadn’t expected a response, bracing for silence and cold eye contact.  
  
“Til the end of the line,” the man echoed as he pulled the hood away from his face.

 

“Bucky,” Steve choked out.

 

* * *

  _I'm breathing_

_Chest heaving_

_It won't always be like this._

_It's not a lot, but it's all that I have._


	3. Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After too many years apart, it's time for Steve and Bucky to face what it means to be so close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say thank you so much for the positive response to this fic! I have only written one-shots and one longer fic before, never a dedicated multi-part short fic. Your subscriptions, kudos, and comments mean so much to me! Here we are in the final chapter. I’m shifting songs for this one, and want to credit Arbor’s Lane once again here as I use their song “Crash.” I hope you guys enjoy this last run! If you like my Stucky style, please check out my other work “It Doesn’t Hurt Like It Used To,” and keep an eye out for future fics of this pairing.
> 
> Perma-thanks to @h34rt1lly as always for being my beta.

_This is how it begins,_

_The waves will crash and you will watch it all give in._

_The view from under is like no other._

* * *

 

  
He’d come to to New York with a mission: Find Steve Rogers. The mission protocols he had laid out hadn’t suggested that Steve might find him first. Now that he was here, separated by a mere few strides, Bucky felt like he couldn’t catch his breath. The man on the bridge; The body he’d left sputtering on a riverbank; The person who haunted his dreams. Steve.

 

“Bucky,” Steve repeated, still rooted in place.

 

“Steve,” he acknowledged softly, rolling his shoulders.

 

Steve had always been the type to talk things through, to rationalize before he acted, even if the span of time was just a few seconds to puzzle through his decision. To see him at a loss for words was novel, from the bits that Bucky could remember.

 

 _Don’t lie,_ a voice nagged in the forefront of his mind, _you remember him more than you do a damn thing about yourself._

 

It was true. Bucky could remember, since he started drawing his dreams and memories, the side of the bed Steve had slept on. His favorite color. The look on his face the day Sarah died.

 

But he couldn’t have prepared for Steve, breaking the trance between them, walking across that rooftop to stand close enough to steal the air from Bucky’s lungs.

 

Memories weren’t enough to predict Steve, shoving his sunglasses up so he could get a better look, eyes tracing Bucky’s face like a man half-starved for love. There was no time to calculate scenarios before Steve gripped his wrists and lifted Bucky’s hands, surveying the contrast between old and new.

 

Bucky let him study. Bucky inhaled a little deeper, desperate for the air that Steve was breathing, the only task he could convince himself to accomplish in that moment. Steve was tracing the plates of his hand, and before he knew it, Bucky couldn’t hold back a laugh. “Ever the artist,” Bucky noted, keeping his voice low. “Examining parts before the whole.”

 

Steve jerked back, dropping Bucky’s metal hand as he startled. “You know who I am.” It wasn’t a question, voice tight and matter-of-fact. “You remember me.”

 

“I remember more than I thought I ever could,” Bucky conceded. “But especially you.”

 

It was Bucky’s turn to trace Steve’s face, pressing the tips of his fingers to the jawline that differed from his dreams. Bucky held him there, taking stock of the things his imagination had left out, and finding the man before him to be even more than he’d remembered. His dreams, his memories… “None of it did you justice.”

 

The time between the words leaving his mouth and Steve’s mouth meeting his was finite.

 

Sliding his hands from Steve’s jaw upwards to dislodge Steve’s hat and grip his hair was automatic.

 

Bucky hadn’t remembered that Steve Rogers had a gravitational pull that rivaled the goddamn sun.

 

Six A.M. wasn’t a particularly notable time of day. Some people were still asleep, others barely beginning their day, and still some that were just ending their day. Six A.M. wouldn’t mean the same thing to James Buchanan Barnes, not since the moment Steve’s lips had pressed to his in earnest. Six A.M. was, henceforth, the _sole_ notable time of day.

 

* * *

 

A lifetime of sexual frustration, paired with a crippling fear that he’d never see the person he loved again, came to a head in the moment that Bucky edged close enough to kiss. Steve had lived with too many years of regret to dwell in another moment, wasted in wonder. Even in his most sensible moments, he’d always acted impulsively, rationalizing choices seconds after he’d contemplated them. Kissing Bucky wasn’t impulsive-- it was instinctual.

 

The sunrise cresting just behind Bucky’s shoulder had just been an added bonus.

Steve lost track of time from the first pushback of Bucky’s mouth on his, effectively invalidating every insecurity Steve had harbored leading up to the kiss. All the years of wasted time seemed profoundly foolish as Bucky’s lips parted to let Steve lean in that much deeper. The years they had been forced to spend apart compacted as fingers knotted in each other’s hair. All that Steve needed to know was that Bucky felt every inch that Steve had held back for so long.

 

“Steve,” Bucky breathed as he broke their connection, pressing his forehead to Steve’s to take a breath. “Not here.”

 

“Then point me to where,” Steve growled as he tipped Bucky’s chin up, burning with impatience.

 

Bucky tugged him through the access door, Steve stopping them every few steps to press him to the wall and nip at his lip, until they reached an unlocked door in the uppermost hallway.

 

“This ain’t ours,” Steve laughed loosely, trying to ignore the anxious thrumming of his heart as it threatened to reach out and grab hold of Bucky.

 

“Doesn’t need to be, and ‘s not s’posed to be,” Bucky’s voice was graveled with impatience as he took a fistful of Steve’s jacket and pulled him inside, pressing him to the door as it shut. “Just needs ta’ be private.”

 

“You sound like Brooklyn,” Steve breathed in awe.

 

“You taste like home,” Bucky countered as he gripped the hem of Steve’s hoodie.

 

* * *

 

Everything was in motion. Steve was moving under Bucky’s hands as he peeled off layers of clothing. Bucky was pinning Steve’s hips against the door with his own before he turned the lock that they’d forgotten. Strands of hair flew in his peripheral vision as Steve brushed them away from his face. His chest was heaving at the speed of their escalation.

 

He’d never been more inclined to say a prayer than he was with the feel of Steve squirming against him.

 

Bucky could settle for thanks, if it hadn’t taken them their entire lives to get to this moment.

 

Instead, Bucky reveled in the high that came as Steve gripped at his waist and ground their hips in tandem, unabashed in his mission.

 

In the moment that Steve wrestled him to the floor, it didn’t matter that the apartment wasn’t the one they’d lived in. Bucky didn’t miss the ratty mattresses shoved together on their palettes. There was nothing in the past that was worth missing when Steve tugged at Bucky’s pants, laying him bare on the hardwood. Every moment under Steve’s awed gaze was forgiveness for all the moments they’d been forced apart.

 

 _The universe can consider itself fucking forgiven,_ Bucky thought as Steve’s teeth sunk into his neck.

 

In his dreams, Bucky was in charge, taking control of every situation with all the fluidity of the Winter Soldier. Under Steve’s hands, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The calloused touch of fingers that had spent too many hours gripping a pencil, ingrained so deep that even the serum hadn’t scrubbed them away, drew Bucky under until he was buried in another forgotten memory. The feel of Steve’s hands under Bucky’s stronger fingers, working to bring heat and circulation back to them when he’d come home and find Steve gripping his sketchbook in the winter. The innocent grip of their hands when they were young.

 

Nothing was innocent about the way Steve’s hands, larger and stronger than even Bucky’s now, slipped around Bucky’s waist to grip his ass.

 

“Quit teasing,” Bucky hissed as Steve’s teeth scraped his nipple, spine arching to meet the touch.

 

Steve didn’t answer, only pausing to work his own pants off, eyes never leaving Bucky’s twitching cock. The serum really had made Steve a work of peak physical perfection, clear in the early morning sun that slanted through the blinds in a way that Bucky hadn’t been able to appreciate through the Captain America get up. Giving Steve only enough time to steady his balance, Bucky arched into a sitting position, kneeling at Steve’s feet. He didn’t give a warning-- merely leaned forward and took hold of Steve’s hips, pulling Steve’s cock into his mouth.

 

The sound that Steve let out was enough to confirm that even in his inexperience, Bucky’s imagination had given him all the help he needed.

 

Steve shivered as Bucky’s tongue explored, arching up onto his toes as Bucky’s tongue ran along every vein he could find.

 

Reality was better than any foolish dream-- not a single dream had informed him of just how erotic it would feel to be on his knees at Steve’s feet.

 

“Bucky,” Steve groaned reluctantly, taking hold of his chin to stop him from continuing. “This isn’t all about me.”

 

“Then show me how you’re gonna make it about me,” Bucky snorted, jest lacing his tone.

 

But Steve didn’t take it that way. Pulling back from Bucky’s open mouth, Steve stepped behind him, nudging at Bucky’s shoulders to guide him back to the floor. Bucky obliged, pressing himself belly-first to the floor and finding himself grateful for the building manager running the heat in every unit.

 

“Spread your legs,” Steve ordered firmly, “and I’ll make it all about you, darlin’.”

 

A moan escaped Bucky’s lips at the command in Steve’s voice, allowing himself to comply as he slid his knees out further, lifting his ass up to allow Steve access to his cock.

 

But that wasn’t where Steve’s mouth landed, hot and persistent.

 

He couldn’t hold back from letting every sound out as Steve’s tongue probed against him, one hand wrapped around Bucky’s cock and the other supporting him upwards. Bucky had always been the filthy-minded one, in his memory, but here Steve was giving him other ideas. The wet slip of his tongue between Bucky’s cheeks was undeniably hot, and when Steve’s hand abandoned Bucky’s cock to spread him wider, Bucky cried out with surprised thrill.

 

“Please,” Bucky whined as Steve worked him open with his tongue, “Steve.”

 

Steve pulled away from Bucky’s hole, shuffling around until he could pull Bucky up on all fours. Once Bucky’s face was squarely aligned with Steve’s cock, he pushed Bucky’s hair back and held it, breathing out in anticipation.

 

“Need you to get this nice and slick,” Steve instructed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

 

“Where’d ya get lessons?” Bucky asked suspiciously, lips poised at the head of Steve’s cock.

 

“The team talks,” Steve muttered, not in the mood for a sex-ed conversation. “C’mon. You were beggin’ jus’ a minute ago.”

 

Bucky didn’t answer, swallowing Steve’s cock until he could slick it with saliva. When he was fairly certain Steve was prepped, Bucky pulled away and trailed spit along the way, if only for good measure. Steve shuddered at the sight, giving Bucky a wink as he pulled off before disappearing to take his place behind Bucky once more.

  
“Wait!” Bucky said sharply, rolling to his back and spreading his legs even further. “Like this. I want… I need to see you.”

  
Steve cupped Bucky’s cheek, nodding and leaning down to press a kiss to Bucky’s temple. “I want to see you, too.”

 

Tugging at Bucky’s thighs, Steve lined himself up against Bucky, hesitant to push forward. “Are you--”

 

“Steve, could you just fuck me?” Bucky growled.

 

Even Steve couldn’t argue with that kind of encouragement, rolling his hips forward to sheath himself inside of Bucky. Bucky had expected pain. His dreams, or maybe nightmares, had ended with Steve in pain as Bucky slid himself inside. But this wasn’t pain. It was serenity.

 

The steady rhythm of Steve’s hips became tandem to Steve’s hand, wrapped around Bucky’s cock and coaxing him towards the edge as Steve himself drew closer. Bucky’s eyes didn’t leave Steve’s face, somehow even more beautiful as it contorted with pleasure. “Steve, I…”

 

“Me too,” Steve bit out, stroking Bucky’s cock faster. “Are you ready?”

 

“Fuck,” Bucky breathed as Steve’s grip tightened and his thrusts deepened.

 

Steve’s words were lost in a moan as he came, stroking at the head of Bucky’s cock until he followed suit.

 

“What happens now?” Bucky asked, seeking assurance as Steve looked down at him, eyes wide in a mix of awe and disbelief.

 

“I keep you from leaving this time,” Steve said in earnest, leaning down to press a kiss to Bucky’s lips.

 

* * *

 

_The sun cuts through and it will be clear,_

_Just how much you're meant to be here._

_The world is bigger than I remember it then_


End file.
